What's new

Wireless Security -HELP!!!

  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

BostonDan

Regular Contributor
I'm hoping someone might be able to shed some insight on the different wireless security methods. I currently have 3 computers and two WET54G Bridges connecting to a DIR655. I have been using WEP, but the more I read about security, I'm planning to move to WPA.

I would appreciate any insight that can be offered with regards to which WPA iss best served in a home environment. The DIR-655 supports WPA-Personal, WPA Enterprise, WPA, WPA2, TKIP, and EAS. The WRT-54G supports Radius, WPA Radius, WPA Pre-Shared Key, WPA2 Radius, WPA2 PreShared Key, TLS, PEAP, TTLS, AES, and TKIP. In one of the laptops, I show WPA-Personal, WPA2 Personal with AES and TKIP on each.

Appreciate any recommendations.
 
Either WPA or WPA2 (Personal or Preshared Key) will be sufficient for your needs. Enterprise/RADIUS/EAP requires additional infrastructure, and to be honest, you have more to worry about someone breaking in and cabling in directly while you are at work than requiring a RADIUS server on top of a strong passphrase.

Having a strong WPA/WPA2 passphrase is essential: despite offering better security, I've seen some weak passphrases cracked faster than their WEP equivalents. At least with WEP some time is required to gather the necessary number of packets. Concatenating words should be enough to make a modified dictionary attack time consuming; I recommend this more than a simple letter substitution (cat->c4t) or appendage (cat->cat9) as current cracking tools are able to check for this with a minimal amount of configuration.
 
Still Confused

Hi jdabbs,

Thanks for the reply. My router (DIR-655) supports WPA-Personal or WPA-Enterprise while the Access Point (WRT-54G) supports WPA/WPA2 Radius or Pre-Shared Key. Does this mean that WPA is not an option for my hardware or is there some overlap with terminology being used.

Suggestions?
 
WPA-Personal and Preshared Key (PSK) are the same thing. You may have to downgrade to TKIP from AES if one of the devices does not support it, but I think this is unlikely given the devices listed.
 
The DIR-655 supports both WPA/TKIP and WPA2 (AES).

Either one is much better than WEP, as long as you use a strong key as jdabbs noted.
I think the 655 even has a mode where it supports both WPA and WPA2.
 

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!
Top